Hunger Strike Futile, South Africa Says

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA — With a hunger strike by detainees gathering momentum, the country`s top law-enforcement official vowed Thursday to stand firm against what he called organized blackmail.

Meanwhile, a group of 42 lawyers representing detainees announced a two-day sympathy fast to support about 300 hunger strikers in four cities. The attorneys said seven detainees from a group of 20 who started a hunger strike in Johannesburg Jan. 23 had been hospitalized in serious condition and were being fed intravenously.

Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok defended the detention of political activists without trial under emergency regulations imposed June 12, 1986. About 30,000 people have been jailed under the regulations; fewer than 1,000 currently are being held, Vlok said.

``We cannot allow (ourselves) to be blackmailed,`` he told a news briefing. ``They are in prison, they are being detained for good reasons . . . and as long as these reasons remain in position, they will remain there.``

``The revolutionary climate is still very high,`` said Vlok. ``We release people and . . . they again start organizing.``

The emergency regulations are needed, he said, because ``I don`t have enough reason to take them to court, but I have enough evidence, information available, that they have been busy and their activities were detrimental to the safety of the public or the maintenance of law and order.``

``According to normal law, it is not always possible to find them guilty,`` Vlok said. He added that the emergency regulations ``work well,``

having reduced incidents of unrest from nearly 20,000 a year during a wave of turmoil that began in 1983 to about 500 a year in 1987 and 1988.

Prisoners, attorneys and other antiapartheid activists appeared to be mounting the most concerted challenge to the practice of detention without trial since the state of emergency was declared.

There has been a series of previous hunger strikes, but none has taken hold nationwide.

``This one is developing much broader support,`` said Jan van Eck, an independent member of Parliament who opposes the emergency regulations.

``There is no sign of it decreasing. It think we`re at the beginning of this strike.``

``We have a major problem,`` he said. ``There is really no procedure under which the detainees can be released or charged. They have been removed from society as part of government policy.``

Van Eck predicted that authorities would resort to force-feeding in order to avoid deaths among the strikers if persuasion fails. He said too many prisoners already are participating in the strike for authorities to defuse the protest action through selective releases.

Asked if the government was prepared to confront violence that could result from the death of hunger strikers, Vlok said he hoped ``that we`ll never be asked to cross that bridge.``

``We will look at it again when we are standing before the crossing,`` he said.

The prisoners are taking only water supplemented with sugar and salt, the same dietary regime as 10 Irish Republican Army strikers who died in a similar protest in 1981, said attorneys who announced the sympathy fast to reporters outside Diepkloof prison in Soweto Thursday.

The risk of health complications becomes severe after about 20 days on such a diet, the attorneys said, adding that one hunger striker already is facing kidney failure after 17 days without food.

The attorneys said about 170 prisoners at Diepkloof Prison were participating in the hunger strike. An additional 105 emergency detainees in Port Elizabeth said they had joined the strike Monday, and the South African Press Association reported two detainees from Witbank and an unknown number of prisoners in Durban had been on strike for about a week.

``Our clients have made it quite clear that they feel that they and their legal representatives have exhausted every legal option which has been available to them,`` the 42 attorneys said in a statement. ``We share their frustration.``

Audrey Coleman, of the human-rights group Black Sash, charged that many of those on strike already were weakened by more than two years of